Local Inequality and Support for Right-wing Populism in Britain
2025 European Political Science Association Conference
Zach Dickson
London School of Economics
What Drives Support for Right-Wing Populism?
Two dominant explanations often compete:
Economic Grievance: A rebellion of the “left behind,” fueled by globalization, automation, job insecurity, and economic dislocation
Cultural Backlash: A reaction against progressive values, immigration, and perceived threats to national identity and traditional norms
Argument: It’s About Relative Status Decline
A key mechanism common to both economic and cultural explanations is relative status decline
It’s not just about absolute deprivation, but the feeling that others around you are getting a better deal
- This can be driven by both economic and cultural factors (e.g., income, education, cultural values)
- Can also be triggered by visible inequality, especially in local contexts
Hypothesis: A rise in local inequality, made salient through housing, increases support for populist right parties.
Research Design
Goal: Create a dynamic, small-area measure of wealth inequality
- Data & Measurement:
- Use detailed housing data to estimate housing prices over time
- 27 million property transactions in the UK
- ML model (XGBoost) predicts house values annually
- Calculate local inequality measures
- GINI coefficient of house prices annually for each local electoral ward
- Extensive validation (see paper for details)
- Correlates with other measures of inequality (e.g., income, wealth)
- Robust to different model specifications and data sources
Local Inequality in the UK
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2022 Electoral Ward Inequality
Outcomes of Interest
Focus on populist right parties in the UK: UKIP and Reform UK
- We pair data with granular attitudinal and electoral data on populist support
- Create panel of UKIP/Reform UK vote share in local elections (2006-2021)
- Individual vote intention from Understanding Society panel study (2008-2023)
Empirical Strategies
Three complementary methods to test the hypothesis:
- Two-Way Fixed Effects:
- Analyzes how changes in inequality within a ward over time affect vote share, controlling for national trends and stable local characteristics.
- Event Study (Difference-in-Differences):
- Treats the construction of a new, high-value property as a “shock” that increases local inequality.
- Traces the dynamic effect on populist support in the years before and after the shock.
- Instrumental Variable (Shift-Share):
- Uses plausibly random variation from the “Right-to-Buy” policy to isolate the causal effect of inequality from other confounding factors.
Key Findings
Across three research designs and two datasets, a one-standard-deviation increase in local house price inequality is associated with a 2 to 5 percentage point increase in UKIP/Reform UK’s vote share.
- Two-Way Fixed Effects: 2-3 percentage points in vote share
- Two-Way Fixed Effects: 2-3 percentage points in vote intention
- Instrumental Variable (2SLS): 3-5 percentage points in vote share
- Event Study: 2-4 percentage points in years 1-2
The Effect of an Inequality “Shock”
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Effects of High-value Properties on Support for Populist Right Party
Conclusion: Local Status Threat Matters
Main Takeaway: Salient, localized inequality—made visible through the housing market—is a driver of support for the populist right in Britain.
- Feelings of being “left behind” are often rooted in immediate, local comparisons, not just abstract national statistics
- Relative status threat links both economic and cultural factors to populism.